KATHMANDU, OCTOBER 27

Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres is paying an official visit to Nepal from 29 October to 1 November 2023.

This is the first visit of Secretary-General Guterres to Nepal after his assumption of Office on 1 January 2017.

The UN Secretary-General, who is visiting Nepal at the invitation of Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, will address the joint session of the federal Parliament on 31 October 2023, according to a press release issued by Nepal's Foreign Ministry.

Guterres is also scheduled to make firsthand observations of the impacts of climate change on the Himalayas and will hold a brief conversation with the affected communities, according to MoFA. He will visit Lumbini, the birthplace of Gautam Buddha and Pokhara the same day.

The Secretary-General will be accompanied by Jean Pierre Lacroix, Under-secretary General for Peace Operations, Hanaa Singer-Hamdy, the Resident Coordinator of the United Nations to Nepal and other officials from the UN Headquarters in New York and the United Nations country team in Nepal.

During the visit, Secretary General Guterres will call on President Ramchandra Paudel and hold meeting with the Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal and other dignitaries.

According to Spokesperson for the Parliament Secretariat Ekram Giri, in the House of Representatives meeting scheduled for October 29, Speaker Devraj Ghimire will inform the members of the HoR about the UN Secretary General's address to the joint session of the Parliament at 4:00pm on October 31.

Giri said the National Assembly Chair had sent SMS to the members of the Upper House informing them about the UN Secretary General's address to the joint session of Parliament on October 31.

On the same day, Foreign Minister Narayan Prakash Saud will table a motion seeking ratification of BIMSTEC charter.

Similarly, Finance Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat will table the Banking Offence and Punishment Act (Second Amendment) Bill 2023.

Nepal's former permanent representative to the United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva Dinesh Bhattarai said that UN Secretary General's visit to Nepal will be an important opportunity for Nepal to enhance its image internationally and let the world body's chief know what Nepal's policies are on some of the global issues. He said the UN Secretary General's visit will promote understanding and trust between UN and Nepal. 'We are victims of climate injustice and it will be better if we can show him some of the places where the impacts of climate change are glaring,' he added.

Bhattarai said Nepal should also tell Guterres that being thehat being the second largest troop contributor to UN peacekeeping missions, Nepal deserved to lead the Field Headquarters.

Nepal has not got a chance to lead the UN Field Headquarters that deploys peacekeeping soldiers.

He said the government also needed to tell Guterres to help repatriate 6,000 Bhutanese refugees whose plight he knew very well as he had served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the past. 'Every Bhutanese refugee has the right to return to their motherland with dignity and Guterres being the chief of the world body can play an important role in upholding Bhutanese refugees' right,' Bhattarai said.

Bhattarai, however, said he did not think Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal's appeal to the international community seeking their help to conclude the peace process was a good idea. He said if Guterres raised any question about transitional justice, it could send a bad message to international community.

'We have completed almost everything related to the peace process, including the integration of Maoist combatants but we have not been able to resolve issues related to transitional justice and I do not know why,' Bhattarai said and added as the victims and perpetrators were in Nepal, the best thing would be to first see how much reparation and other remedies that victims got and how the perpetrators admit their mistakes.

Guterres who was the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 2007, had visited the refugee camp in Jhapa the same year.

A version of this article appears in the print on October 28, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.